Body

PHILADELPHIA - Pancreatic cancer carries a dismal prognosis. According to the National Cancer Institute, the overall five-year relative survival for 2003-2009 was 6 percent.

Still, researchers and clinicians don't have a non-invasive way to even detect early cells that portent later disease. 'There's no PSA test for pancreatic cancer,' they say, and that's one of the main reasons why pancreatic cancer is detected so late in its course.

Does your salad know what time it is? It may be healthier for you if it does, according to new research from Rice University and the University of California at Davis.

"Vegetables and fruits don't die the moment they are harvested," said Rice biologist Janet Braam, the lead researcher on a new study this week in Current Biology. "They respond to their environment for days, and we found we could use light to coax them to make more cancer-fighting antioxidants at certain times of day." Braam is professor and chair of Rice's Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology.

Bumblebees searching for nectar go for signposts on flowers rather than the bull's eye. A new study, by Levente Orbán and Catherine Plowright from the University of Ottawa in Canada, shows that the markings at the center of a flower are not as important as the markings that will direct the bees to the center. The work is published online in Springer's journal, Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature.

JUPITER, FL-- Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a compound that could counter Parkinson's disease in two ways at once.

In a new study published recently online ahead of print by the journal ACS Chemical Biology, the scientists describe a "dual inhibitor"- two compounds in a single molecule-- that attacks a pair of proteins closely associated with development of Parkinson's disease.

New Rochelle, NY, June 20, 2013—At least half of all cases of deafness that develop from birth through infancy in developed countries have a genetic basis, as do many cases of later onset progressive hearing loss. To date, at least 1,000 mutations occurring in 64 genes in the human genome have been linked to hearing loss. Next-generation DNA sequencing technologies are enabling the identification of these deafness-causing genetic variants, as described in a Review article in Genetic Testing and Molecular Biomarkers, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

June 20, 2013, New York, NY and Oxford, UK — An advanced tumor is a complex ecosystem. Though derived from a single cell, it evolves as it grows until it contains several subspecies of cells that vary dramatically in their genetic traits and behaviors. This cellular heterogeneity is what makes advanced tumors so difficult to treat.

Changing ocean water temperatures and circulation patterns have profoundly affected key Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf zooplankton species in recent decades, and may be influencing the recovery of Atlantic cod and other fish stocks in the region.

Surgical Theater's Surgical Rehearsal Platform™ (SRP) provided neurosurgeons the opportunity to rehearse a complicated cerebral case before entering the operating room, saving the surgical team critical seconds on a time-sensitive procedure.

The study reveals for the first time how the movement and duplication of segments of DNA known as transposons, is regulated. This prevents a genomic meltdown, and instead enables transposons to live in harmony with their hosts — including humans.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Rhode Island Hospital has reduced the incidence of hospital-associated Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infections by 70 percent and reduced annual associated mortality in patients with hospital-associated C. difficile by 64 percent through successive implementation of five rigorous interventions , as reported in the July 2013 issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety.

Bacterial resistance to drugs leads pharmaceutical labs to be in constant search for new antibiotics to treat the same diseases. For the last thirty years, the sea bottom has yielded a wealth of substances with properties of interest to the pharmaceutical industry. Isolated from a marine microorganism off the coast of Alicante by the company BioMar, baringolin shows promising antibiotic activity at a very low concentration.

Food is the basis of human survival and development, and its safety is an important issue for people's livelihood, and also an important indicator to measure the quality of people's lives in a country. The statistics showed that the main factor of Chinese food poisoning remained to be microbial pathogens, ranking before the chemical toxin. In food contamination, some common and highly pathogenic pathogens include Listeria monocytogenes, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Norwalk and Rotavirus, which are the culprit cause of food poisoning.

Scientist describe a new striking species of moth from China with an engaging wing pattern. The new species Stenoloba solaris has its name inspired by the orange circular patch on its wings that resembles the rising sun. The study was published in the open access journal Zookeys.

The collaborative study, led by Durham University and the London School of Hygiene &Tropical Medicine, is published today in The Lancet and unusually brings together the health and development communities.Half the world's population is at risk from malaria. A review of studies from different locations across the world with risk factors for the disease showed clearly that in these impoverished communities, the risk of malaria was doubled in the poorest children compared with the least poor.

Every year, more than 16,000 Americans die as a result of what's known as an "aortic dissection" — a catastrophic rupture of the aorta, the body's largest artery. Once thought to be a simple structural failure, aortic dissection is now understood to be caused by an inflammatory process that weakens the artery's walls.